No poem from me tonight — But there’ll be a sonnet from me tomorrow. Meanwhile here are some sonnets to keep you company and gladden you as you go about your possibly sad and forlorn day, which might, perhaps, be stripped of poetry (I’m just being facetious — I know all your lives and days are filled to the brim with poetry! 🙂 ).
This first one is by William Wordsworth, and is one of my favorites. I have often felt like Wordsworth did, but he lived in the early 19th century, so life should have been less frantic — just goes to show that the times, they aren’t a-changin’– they’ve always been bad:
The World is Too Much With Us
By William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
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I love how Mr. Wordsworth’s wants to go back to the times of the Greeks, when the gods were marvellous, mysterious, all-powerful, and all about nature.
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Here’s one by that singularly wonderful sonneteer, Will Shakespeare:
Sonnet 18:
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
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I’ve always enjoyed these lines:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
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Those are such beautiful and hopeful lines at the end! Such a testament to the power of poetry and art, which confer immortality (although even these fade or fall with time, as we’ll see in the sonnet below, namely:
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Ozymandiasby Percy Bysshe Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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And thus, all the works of men and women come crumbling to dust. A cheering and cheerful thought, no?
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And, finally, this oft-quoted little jewel of a sonnet:
How do I Love Thee?
Sonnet Number 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day’sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for right;I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.
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I love how she says these lines below — nicely made parallels and anaphoras. And those expected similes are so perfectly expressed:
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
And the idea of immortality shows up again, with the sense that this time, it will not be an ephemeral sort of immortality through art, but a permanent one, through love.
I do not feel cynical here, even though that part of me might want to rear its contrary, twisty head. I’m willing to go with Ms. Barrett Browning’s vision here.
For, as we all like to believe, Love conquers Death.
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